


Query: Dad?

by Fangirlingmanaged



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Dummy is a good boy, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Proof that Tony Stark has a heart, Tony Stark is Good With Kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlingmanaged/pseuds/Fangirlingmanaged
Summary: DUM-E doesn't understand.





	Query: Dad?

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself cry.

Dummy keeps dousing everything in fire extinguisher for a few weeks after Tony’s funeral. Nobody understands what’s happening; Dummy has always been clumsy and overeager, but he’s never malfunctioned like this before. He douses Tony’s lab until someone comes in and catches him. Then, when he gets told off for misbehaving, he makes a series of noises and chirps that sound  _sad_  even though it shouldn’t be possible for a robot to sound like that.

Peter, Harley and Rhodey all take a look at his code to see what the problem is. None of them can find anything, and so they just let him be. They think it’s a new quirk; a small malfunction that Tony didn’t get to tell them about. It keeps happening, though, and the last time Morgan almost got hit with some of the foam so it’s becoming a bit of a problem. 

They talk about shutting him down for good, after that. Pepper thinks they should; there’s no need for him anymore. Maybe not shut him down, but R&D at Stark Industries could certainly help his expertise. Rhodey and Peter are vehemently opposed to it; Peter even pleads to take him home, but everyone knows he doesn’t have the space. Rhodey offers the Avengers Tower, newly reconstructed for the new team per Tony’s last wishes, but they all know it’s not really feasible. 

So they think about shutting him down, and they’re in the middle of this conversation when Morgan comes in, looking angrier than they’ve seen her in…forever. Pepper tries to get her to tell them what’s wrong, but she only keeps repeating “You can’t, Momma. You can’t.”

It takes a while for her to stop being so upset, but Pepper and Rhodey have gotten good at this by now. She hadn’t acted out after Tony’s passing, not really, but she was her father’s daughter and sometimes her moods were as mercurial as his. Morgan finally bursts down crying and tells them everything. 

“Dummy doesn’t mean to be bad, I promise, Momma! He just misses Daddy. Daddy used to come every time he had the fire extinguisher, remember? Every time. He just wants Daddy to come home!”

Morgan’s logic makes a lot of sense. Pepper and Rhodey had walked in on enough arguments between Tony and his bot to know it to be true. It was their type of bonding, they both knew, when Tony pretended to scold his bot. In a way, the very first child Tony ever had. Rhodey takes the news the hardest; he had been there for most of Dummy’s development so he knows him better than Pepper does. So Rhodey goes to the workshop, doesn’t quite run there but it’s a near thing, and Pepper takes care of Morgan. 

When she’s finally asleep, exhausted after her upset earlier, Pepper goes down to the workshop because Rhodey never came up. Not for dinner and not when it was the time he usually goes home. The sound coming from the workshop breaks her heart. She’s never heard Dummy sound like this before. It sounds like wailing; like somewhere between the circuits and motherboard, Dummy’s little heart is breaking. 

“I know, buddy, I know,” Rhodey is telling him, petting him softly. “I’m so sorry, Dummy. I’m so sorry, buddy. It’s okay. It’s okay; we’re gonna take care of you, all right? You’re not gonna be alone. I promise you. It’s okay.”

Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget Tony’s genius goes far beyond the Iron Man armors. JARVIS was always more conspicuous; his near-human traits were always easier to digest. Dummy, for all intents and purpose, should be just a mechanized arm capable of handling heavy equipment, yet here he is. Crying over his creator, over his father; mourning him just like a boy in Tennessee, and another in Queens, and a little girl just up the stairs. 


End file.
